This episode is being published almost a year to the day after Hamas attacked Israel. I have tried writing different versions of this introductionlakers88, tried to write something up to that moment — and failed. Nothing I write is up to memorializing the horror of that day or of what has followed.

So I’m just going to try to say what has happened. On Oct. 7 a year ago, Hamas launched an invasion of Israel. Its fighters butchered Israeli citizens and non-Israelis and took hundreds of people hostage. Many things can be said about Yahya Sinwar, the head of Hamas. One thing I have never heard said, including by Israelis, is that he is irrational or emotional or impulsive. He is, agreed by all, to be an icy tactician. He has aims and plans, and he is willing to sacrifice lives, including Palestinian lives, by the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands to achieve them.

Like many Americans, my frame of reference after Oct. 7 was Sept. 11, when America was attacked, when civilians were killed, by an adversary who wanted to provoke us into disastrous reaction. In my first audio essay after Oct. 7, I was one of many who offered a warning based on that: Don’t give Sinwar what he wants, what he is trying to get you to give him.

What did Sinwar want on Oct. 7? At a moment when Israel was normalizing relations with some Arab countries and the Palestinian cause was dimming geopolitically and in the region, he wanted to recenter his people, their suffering, their fight. He wanted to show that Israel could be attacked, that it was vulnerable. He wanted, in doing that, to call his allies — Hezbollah, Iran — into the fight. He wanted to lure Israel into a massive, brutal invasion of Gaza that would become an occupation with no obvious end, that would shred Israel’s international legitimacy and, over time, sap its strength. That would begin or continue, depending on how you look at it, the work of turning Israel into the modern equivalent of apartheid South Africa, a pariah state internationally. He wanted to make the Palestinian Authority look weak, ineffectual, a subcontractor of Israeli control, while his Hamas, at least, was fighting for liberation as the group saw it.

So where are we, then, a year later? Israel’s possible peace deal with Saudi Arabia has vanished. Israel’s invasion of Gaza has left more than 40,000 Palestinians dead and many, many more homeless, wounded, grieving, exposed to famine and disease. Gaza is leveled, the destruction immense, almost beyond what the human mind can comprehend.

Israel’s leaders have no idea what to do next there. They have no plan for who is going to run it, except for them. They do not admit they are reoccupying Gaza, but it is clearly what they have done. Occupations get harder as time goes on. They have no offramp for this occupation. They have no theory of what to do after or next.

We are having trouble retrieving the article content.

Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.lakers88

• How
• Biden
• lakers88
• East
• Middle